Early Quantitative Assessment of Non-Functional Requirements

Non-functional requirements (NFRs) of software systems are a well known source of uncertainty in effort estimation. Yet, quantitatively approaching NFR early in a project is hard. This paper makes a step towards reducing the impact of uncertainty due to NRF. It offers a solution that incorporates NFRs into the functional size quantification process. The merits of our solution are twofold: first, it lets us quantitatively assess the NFR modeling process early in the project, and second, it lets us generate test cases for NFR verification purposes. We chose the NFR framework as a vehicle to integrate NFRs into the requirements modeling process and to apply quantitative assessment procedures. Our solution proposal also rests on the functional size measurement method, COSMIC-FFP, adopted in 2003 as the ISO/IEC 19761 standard. We extend its use for NFR testing purposes, which is an essential step for improving NFR development and testing effort estimates, and consequently for managing the scope of NFRs. We discuss the advantages of our approach and the open questions related to its design as well

A Holistic Quality Evaluation, Selection and Improvement Approach driven by Multilevel Goals and Strategies

Organizations should establish business goals and check for their achievement in a systematic and disciplined way. In order to know if a business goal is achieved, it should be necessary to consider information need goals that also can require satisfying measurement and evaluation goals at operational level. Furthermore, if measurement and evaluation goals are not aligned with top-level business goals such as tactical or strategic level goals, the organization could waste its effort and resources. Usually, the different goals established in an organization are operationalized through projects. For a given project, strategies should be used in order to help in the goal achievement. A strategy defines a set of activities and methods to be followed for a specific goal purpose. Ultimately, to engineering all these issues in a systematic way, organizations should adopt a holistic evaluation approach supported by a set of integrated strategies. By means of a systematic literature review as research method, we have observed that very few approaches support integrated strategies and multilevel goals. To bridge this gap, we have developed a holistic quality multilevel and multipurpose evaluation approach that ties together multilevel goals, projects and integrated strategies. As contributions, this paper discusses an enhanced conceptual base (specified by ontologies) for linking business and information need goal concepts with project, strategy and nonfunctional requirements concepts. Then, it defines the step by step of our holistic quality evaluation approach, by listing the necessary activities to establish goals and projects at different organizational levels. Lastly, it specifies and illustrates evaluation scenarios for business/information need goal purposes such as understanding, improving, monitoring and controlling, comparing and selecting entities, which are supported by strategies and strategy patterns.Fil: Rivera, María Belén. Universidad Nacional de la Pampa. Facultad de Ingeniería; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Becker, Pablo Javier. Universidad Nacional de la Pampa. Facultad de Ingeniería; ArgentinaFil: Olsina, Luis Antonio. Universidad Nacional de la Pampa. Facultad de Ingeniería; ArgentinaFil: Papa, María Fernanda. Universidad Nacional de la Pampa. Facultad de Ingeniería; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentin

A Review on Framework and Quality of Service Based Web Services Discovery

Selection of Web services (WSs) is one of the most important steps in the application of different types of WSs such as WS composition systems and the Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) registries. The more available these WSs on the Internet are, the wider the number of these services whose functions match the various service requests is. Selecting WSs with higher quality largely depends on the quality of service (QoS) since it plays a significant role in selecting such services. In achieving this selection of the best WSs, the potential WSs are ranked according to the user’s necessities on service quality. In many cases, the value of QoS ontology is realized by its support for nonfunctional features of WSs. This ontology is also capable of providing solutions to the interoperability of QoS description. Moreover, based on the QoS ontology, it becomes more possible to develop a framework of semantic WS discovery. The framework enhances the automatic discovery of WSs and can improve the users’ efficiency in finding the best web services. Thus, Web Services are software functionalities publish and accessible through the Internet. Different protocols and web mechanism have been defined to access these Services

Quality of service (QoS) analysis frameworkn for text to speech (TTS) services

Quality of service (QoS) evaluations is significant and necessary for text to speech web service applications. Text to speech media conversion quality measurements has general and specific mechanisms for its functional and nonfunctional requirements. The main objective of this thesis is to introduce QoS framework which is able to evaluate and analyze the perceived quality of services (QoS) for text to speech (TTS) web services. To achieve this goal, the framework combines two main mechanisms for measuring the speech quality. General quality attributes measure the response time of TTS services, specific quality attributes measure intelligibility and naturalness through subjective quality measurements, which are mapped onto mean opinion score (MOS). Twenty individuals participated the experiment to test the speech quality by comparing three services fromtexttospeech.com, Natural Reader and Yakitome. Aggregate scores has been used to calculate the combination of general and specific nonfunctional QoS on TTS Web services. The result shown better scale for quality estimation, service1 (Fromtexttospeech) 47.84% is suitable TTS service provider where service2 and service3 (NaturalReader and Yakitome) are close 31.62 and 21.53% respectively and less preferred for listening tests to assess synthesized speech. It is essential to consider the user’s perspective when evaluating the quality of services for media conversion services such as text to speech (TTS) to enhance the user experience

ARCHITECTURE FOR A CBM+ AND PHM CENTRIC DIGITAL TWIN FOR WARFARE SYSTEMS

The Department of the Navy’s continued progression from time-based maintenance into condition-based maintenance plus (CBM+) shows the importance of increasing operational availability (Ao) across fleet weapon systems. This capstone uses the concept of digital efficiency from a digital twin (DT) combined with a three-dimensional (3D) direct metal laser melting printer as the physical host on board a surface vessel. The DT provides an agnostic conduit for combining model-based systems engineering with a digital analysis for real-time prognostic health monitoring while improving predictive maintenance. With the DT at the forefront of prioritized research and development, the 3D printer combines the value of additive manufacturing with complex systems in dynamic shipboard environments. To demonstrate that the DT possesses parallel abilities for improving both the physical host’s Ao and end-goal mission, this capstone develops a DT architecture and a high-level model. The model focuses on specific printer components (deionized [DI] water level, DI water conductivity, air filters, and laser motor drive system) to demonstrate the DT’s inherent effectiveness towards CBM+. To embody the system of systems analysis for printer suitability and performance, more components should be evaluated and combined with the ship’s environment data. Additionally, this capstone recommends the use of DTs as a nexus into more complex weapon systems while using a deeper level of design of experiment.Outstanding ThesisCivilian, Department of the NavyCommander, United States NavyCivilian, Department of the NavyCivilian, Department of the NavyCivilian, Department of the NavyCivilian, Department of the NavyCivilian, Department of the NavyCivilian, Department of the NavyApproved for public release. Distribution is unlimited